In medical facilities like hospitals, a variety of medical examination apparatuses, such as modalities for CR (computed radiography), CT (computer tomography), MRI (magnetic resonation imaging), PET (positron emission tomography) and ultrasonic diagnosis, have been widely used. Medical images taken from patients by the modalities are used in medical diagnoses, taking an important roll on determining the nature of a disorder of each individual patient.
For the diagnosis based on medical images, doctors of various diagnosis and treatment departments generally ask specialists of an image-interpretation department for an interpretation of the medical images. In the image-interpretation department, the doctor interprets the medical images and reports the interpretation. Then, the doctor in the diagnosis and treatment department examines the report on the image interpretation, hereinafter referred to as the medical report, to diagnose a disorder (an injury or a disease) of the patient.
Recently, in order to improve work efficiency in the medical field, computerization of medical images and charts has been promoted, and systems for making the above-mentioned image interpretation online have been suggested. For example, in a medical report making system disclosed in JPA2004-305289, such information that identifies a medical image and a corresponding location in the medical image is added to a comment in the medical report, so as to make it easy to recognize which location in the medical image the comment is referring to.
Since a target area of the above-mentioned medical inspection, such as an organ or a diseased site, extends three-dimensionally, it is general in the inspection like CT scanning or MRI scanning, e.g. tomography, to capture a series of medical images slicing across a body axis of a patient. Among these successive tomograms, one showing an area of concern is designed to be examined for diagnosis.
However, according to the above-mentioned prior art, if the area of concern is shown in many images, it is necessary to choose the images containing the area of concern each individually and then designate the area of concern in each of the chosen images to link it to a comment in the report. These procedures involve a possibility of making a mistake in choosing the images or designating the area of concern. Because this prior art does not consider checking or confirming the chosen image and the designated area of concern, there is a possibility of producing a medical report on the basis of the mistaken image or area of concern. Accuracy of the diagnoses will be worsened if they are made based on such inaccurate medical reports.